


Say My Name (And Every Colour Illuminates)

by canistakahari



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bonding, Gen, Past Character Death, Psychological Trauma, Serious Injuries, Shapeshifting, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 05:24:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he’s feeling most lonely, Jim meets Bones. Eventually, he meets Leonard McCoy, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say My Name (And Every Colour Illuminates)

**Author's Note:**

> Modern-day supernatural AU.

Every evening for the last seven days, just as the sun dips down and ignites the horizon, Jim spots the dog at the edge of the cornfield.

It watches him like a statue; one paw raised and curled up against its chest, ready to bolt, ears turned in his direction.

Ignoring it, Jim feeds the chickens, focusing on their quiet babble as they mill around his bare feet, occasionally pecking his toes, but he can still feel the dog’s eyes on him. 

When he looks up again, it’s gone.

The next evening, the dog returns, silhouetted against the setting sun.

In the wash of bright, warm light, Jim looks down at his elongated shadow and the clucking hens picking at grain around him. Then he frowns. 

With a sinking feeling, he counts them, and comes up one short.

“Well, fuck,” he says, feeling unaccountably betrayed. This time, when he looks up, he catches the dog in the act of slinking away, head down, tail tucked between his legs.

_At least the little bastard feels guilty_ , thinks Jim, scowling.

The following day, about an hour before he usually feeds the chickens, Jim walks out to the edge of the gravel field that bisects his property from the farm opposite, and puts down a bowl of dog food.

It’s dry kibble mixed with a healthy scoop of premium wet food, the stuff that has happy drooling dogs on the front of the package and smells like canned ass, but every dog Jim’s ever had went mental over it, so he hopes it will do the same for the stray that’s decided Jim’s chicken coop is his own personal buffet. 

“This is for you,” he calls out to the waning light. “It’s _way_ better than chicken. This has got…organ meats and gravy and all the vitamins and nutrients your skinny thieving body needs to grow big and strong. If you’re a good boy and I’ve still got seven chickens tomorrow morning, then I’ll feed you every night, okay? Got it? Good.”

The dog isn’t watching him when he feeds the girls that night, but when he checks the bowl the next morning, it’s been licked clean.

And he still has seven chickens. 

“Good boy,” he says loudly, just in case the dog is listening.

Then he feels a bit like an idiot, and pretends it never happened.

The dog starts appearing _before_ he puts the food bowl out, well away from the chicken coop, like he actually understood Jim’s threat.

He always watches Jim warily as he sets the bowl out, disappears when Jim looks away, and every morning, the bowl is empty. 

Jim feeds him every night for two weeks. 

In his head, Jim calls the animal _Bones_ , because he’s a sack of them, rail-thin and wiry, with a long pointed muzzle and huge green eyes. His fur is a uniform dark brown that lights up mahogany in the setting sun. 

Sometimes, Jim tries to approach him. Bones tolerates his presence for a while, but as soon as Jim gets within about fifteen feet, he skedaddles, disappearing soundlessly into the shrubbery that lines the back yard. 

It’s a disappointment, because Bones never lets Jim get any closer than that, even when he’s got food in his hand.

Eventually, Jim stops trying. He can’t blame Bones for having instincts. Beginning to build up a tale of animal abuse in his head to explain the skittishness, Jim is overcome by pity, and adds a bit of raw meat to the dish as a treat whenever he can afford it. 

The reward is in the way Bones starts to look more solid, his fur thicker and glossier, less like a mangy mutt and more like a wild animal. 

One night, he hears howling, low and mournful, rolling over the fields.

It’s just one voice, and nothing calls back to it. 

Bones is there, waiting, when Jim goes to feed him. He lifts his muzzle and howls, and Jim comes to a slow realisation.

Bones is no stray dog.

Well, hell.

Jim’s never seen a wolf before, and now he’s been unthinkingly feeding one for nearly a month, hoping each time that Bones might decide to let him get a little closer. The thing is, he’s no more scared of Bones than he’s ever been. He’s still got seven chickens, and Bones still bolts if Jim tries to get near. 

Stray dog or lone wolf, whatever, Jim finds he doesn’t actively give a shit. Bones is alone, and for the most part, so is Jim.

If he ends up in the newspaper under the headline “IOWA MAN EATEN ON FARM BY WOLF” then at least his death will be interesting when his life hasn’t been.

The next evening, Bones doesn’t come.

Jim tries to pretend he isn’t worried. 

(Protip: it totally doesn’t work.)

After an irritable night spent kicking around the house and occasionally peering out the window in hopes of seeing Bones, Jim goes to bed and proceeds to toss and turn all damn night.

An hour before dawn, he finally hauls himself out of bed. 

The fields are still and quiet, and Jim pads out to the food dish in bare feet, pushing a hand through his hair. 

This is stupid, and he is a stupid person for worrying. Bones is a wild animal and he has every right to move on if he wants to. He doesn’t belong to Jim. A food dish is not a binding agreement.

The bowl is still full.

Jim frowns. 

He doesn’t bother to do the reasonable thing and go back to get shoes and a coat on, just walks the circumference of his property, shoeless and t-shirted and looking for signs of life. Something is pulling at him, hooking him in just below his ribs, a distant ache. It draws him out into the fields, walking until he hits the trees that border the south-west end of the property, the buffer zone of gnarled old pathetic forest cut through by a fast-flowing narrow river that separates the Kirk farm from the plot of land belonging to the Mitchells. Jim never goes here, doesn’t like the sagging trees and drying moss beneath his feet. 

For a moment, he stops. He wants to turn back, crawl into bed for another couple hours and forget all this. 

What the hell is he even thinking? 

He could give himself tetanus out here. Wouldn’t _that_ be a ridiculous thing to need to phone his mother about? _Hey, ma. I stepped on a rusty old soup can because I was out after dark wandering the woods barefoot looking for this wolf I started feeding and now I’m in the hospital with tetanus. Maybe I should update my immunizations._

Ready to turn back, tense with the silence and the oppressive weight of the dark trees, Jim _listens_.

In the close silence of the trees, he can hear the ragged whimpering of a dying animal. 

Heart pounding with dread, Jim keeps walking.

He finds Bones by a rotting stump, sprawled on his side, his back leg caught in an ancient trap. 

“Jesus Christ,” whispers Jim, nausea gripping him. It’s clear from the amount of blood and the way the limb is splintering that Bones has been thrashing for hours. He’s exhausted now, limp and panting, but when Jim steps closer to lean over him, his head snaps up with a snarl and he closes his teeth over the space where Jim’s hand was hovering just a moment before.

“Whoa, easy,” soothes Jim, holding up both hands defensively. “Hey, easy there, sweetheart. You’re okay.” 

Bones curls his lips back, revealing bloodied teeth, his eyes wide and glazed over with pain and naked fear. He is cornered and terrified and Jim will be lucky to touch him and get his hand back with all the fingers still attached.

Holy shitballs. Seriously.

Jim’s lived on a farm all his life. He’s had to put down enough severely injured animals to know that the kindest thing he could do for Bones right now would be to walk back to the farm and get the rifle from the garage. Bones can either die slowly and in terrible pain, or Jim can do the humane thing and shoot him.

He has no explanation for why he rips a strip from his t-shirt and stands there wondering how best you muzzle a panicked wolf without further contributing to its pain-fuelled breakdown. 

Eventually, after hovering around Bones like an idiot and avoiding two more weak snaps of his jaws, Jim realises that Bones can’t snap at anything behind him without moving his body in a way that clearly hurts him.

Crouching down, teeth gritted stubbornly, Jim grips either end of the fabric in his hands and loops it swiftly around his snout, pulling it taut before Bones can twist his head free. Bones whines, trembling, but Jim murmurs to him gently as he securely ties off the material, and Bones seems to abandon the fight, dropping his head against the underbrush, his chest heaving.

Jim gives into the urge to stroke him now that Bones has settled, long sweeping pats that go from head to flank.

“That’s a good boy,” murmurs Jim, rubbing his ears. “That’s a good scary wolf. I’m going to take you back home, okay? I won’t let you die all alone.”

The trap release is rusty, and Jim is almost positive his fanciful imaginings about ending up in the hospital are about to come true, but after ten frustrating, sweaty minutes, it loosens, and Jim is able to pry the jaws apart. Bones immediately pulls his leg free with a low whimper.

“I’m going to pick you up,” says Jim. “Please don’t rip that muzzle and eat my face.” 

Bones’s eyes roll up, watching him warily. Jim’s pretty sure he’s growling, which would be terrifying if Bones could at all move. Kneeling down next to him Jim tucks an arm under his shoulders and another beneath his hips and _lifts_.

Luckily, Bones doesn’t squirm; he goes obligingly limp with his head resting over Jim’s arm, tolerating the long walk without struggling. 

When they reach the farm, Jim takes him into the garage, setting him down on a pile of hay. He finds old dog blankets in one of the storage containers, making a soft pile of them, and moves Bones onto the make-shift nest, trying to make him comfortable.

By the time Jim has returned with a water bowl and a dish of wet dog food, Bones has pawed off the muzzle and is lying exhausted on the blankets, seemingly too weak to even growl at Jim as he sets both down on the floor close enough for Bones to reach them. 

For a while, Jim sits with him, sick with guilt for not going to look for him sooner.

He goes back to bed when Bones falls asleep, not sure he can handle watching him die during the night.

Jim wakes up in the middle of the afternoon smelling like dog and covered in little smears of blood, filled with dread.

Waking up to death is not a feeling he ever wanted to repeat.

When he checks on Bones, it’s with anxious trepidation, replaced quickly by stunned surprise.

Bones is awake.

Bones is _awake_ , lying with his paws tucked under his muzzle. Upon hearing Jim’s footsteps his ears swivel around and he lifts his head, looking at him with calm, clear eyes. 

The food and water dishes are both empty.

“You’re not dead,” says Jim dumbly.

Bones blinks at him. Then he gets to all fours, clearly favouring his back leg, and limps over to Jim. 

Jim backs right out of the garage in outright shock and Bones stops, considering him, head cocked. 

Then, with a deliberateness that cannot be a coincidence, Bones rolls onto his back and shows Jim his belly, throat bared and paws curled against his chest.

Jim is _floored_.

Well. It would be rude to ignore that invitation, wouldn’t it?

Jim kneels down tentatively, reaches out and rubs at the soft fur of Bones’s belly, astounded by this show of submission.

It’s almost as shocking as the way Bones’s leg has healed almost completely over the last few hours.

Apparently whatever reservations Bones had about letting Jim get near him have been completely eliminated.

He allows Jim to examine his leg, watching him steadily with green eyes that, this close up, Jim can see are shot through with delicate veins of warm brown. When Jim washes away the dried blood, there’s nothing there but shiny pink healed skin, a scar that looks days, not hours, old. There’s no sign of a fracture or a break.

Was Jim imagining it?

Last night, the limb had looked mangled, dangling as though only skin held it together pierced by broken bone. Today, in the fading afternoon light, it’s healthy and strong. It’s clear he was injured, but not as badly as Jim thought.

Jim sits next to him after cleaning and bandaging the scar tissue, stroking Bones’s warm flank, listening to him breathe, feeling that powerful heart thumping against his deep chest. 

“Bones, you are something, else, you know that?” he murmurs. 

Bones exhales irritably, squirming out of the circle of Jim’s arms as though he’s tired of sitting still to be prodded. He shakes himself off and then looks at Jim expectantly, their eye-line almost level.

“Let me guess,” says Jim. “You’re hungry.” 

Bones shoves his head under Jim’s hand for more petting, apparently decides he doesn’t actually want to be standing, and sits down on top of him like he’s a lapdog and not a fully-grown adult wolf.

“Oof,” mutters Jim, scrubbing at Bones’s ears. “Well okay. You just want attention. From skittish to needy in less than a day.”

Just like that, Bones decides that Jim is his master.

Mostly, Bones doesn’t come in the house. He commandeers the nest of hay and blankets Jim spread out as a sick bed as his territory and sleeps there.

He follows Jim around the farm, keeping him company as he does chores and lying in a patch of sunlight and dozing when Jim spends hours fiddling with the engine of his father’s old Corvette. He’s a silent, comforting presence, bumping right up against Jim’s leg to demand stroking when Jim takes a long walk around the cornfield. 

Bones stops limping a day after Jim rescues him from the trap.

“He needs a collar, Jimmy,” says his mother, when Jim tells her about Bones on the phone. “Or maybe a high-visibility vest. If he gets spotted by some overzealous hunter or found by someone and doesn’t have identification on him, who knows what could happen? Do you want him taken away and put in a zoo?”

No. No, Jim does not want that to happen.

He hangs up after the conversation and looks out the window to where Bones is sleeping on top of the chicken coop. 

The chickens, to Jim’s complete and utter astonishment, have accepted Bones’s presence without a hint of fear despite the fact that not too long ago, Bones _ate_ one of them. However, apparently that hatchet has been long buried, judging by how Bones herds them sometimes when they stray too far from the coop, nudging them gently with his nose back to where he can see all of them. The first time Jim saw it, he laughed himself sick.

That afternoon, when he drives into town for groceries and more dog food, Jim uses the opportunity to pick up a sturdy leather collar as well, getting a tag made at the counter that says “Bones” on one side and has Jim’s name and phone number on the back.

He assumes getting it on Bones will be an unpleasant experience, but even though Bones’s ears go flat when he spots the item in Jim’s hands, he just sits down heavily on his haunches and glares haughtily at Jim while he buckles it on. 

“What did you expect?” asks Jim. “You move into the garage, I pay for all your meals, and I’m not going to claim you? You’ve got another thing coming, buddy. If you were a proper dog, I’d take you to the vet. Get you all your boosters. But I’m pretty sure I can’t own you without a license, so we’re just going to hope that if anyone sees you they’ll just assume you’re a Malamute or a German Shepherd.”

Bones just yawns, simultaneously showing off his disinterest and his neat rows of teeth, and when Jim has adjusted the collar to his satisfaction, he gets up, shakes himself off, and disappears around the back of the house.

Sometimes, he vanishes for hours at a time and Jim has to cope with a low-level anxiety and flashbacks to finding Bones in that trap, whining and in pain. 

At the same time, Jim recognises Bones is a wild animal. Even though Bones will tolerate a collar, he likely won’t allow Jim to leash him to the porch where he’ll be safe. 

“Yeah, okay!” calls Jim. “I buy you a present and you just walk away, see if I care!”

Bones’s head peeps back around the edge of the house, fixing Jim with a disturbingly human glare. Then he barks pointedly—which he’s never done before and Jim had no idea was a sound wolves even _made_ —and leaves again. 

“If that was a thank you,” says Jim loudly, “Which is what I will graciously assume, we’ll have to see about getting you a translator. I don’t speak canine.”

Christ, Jim’s been alone here for a long fucking time. He’s gotta stop talking to animals like they can understand him.

Luckily, Winona gets back that night, and immediately reasserts herself as Chief Troublemaking Asshole by scaring the absolute bejesus out of Jim in the kitchen.

He’s rinsing off carrots—more carrots than you could ever _dream of_ , the crop having spontaneously regenerated itself after a really bad unexpected late spring frost and then promptly taken over the adjacent tomato patch—when, out of fucking nowhere, a pair of hands clamp down over his eyes. 

“GUESS WHO!” yells Winona. 

Jim’s response comes in two parts, both of which are incredibly emasculating. First, there’s the leaping into the air, and, second, there’s the _screaming_. 

Winona just laughs. And laughs, and laughs, and then just for fun, she laughs some more. 

“I hate you,” wheezes Jim, clutching at his chest with wet, carrot-y hands. “You’re lucky you didn’t get stabbed in the eye with a root vegetable.” 

“Ohhh, I’m so scared of my big intimidating carrot-wielding son,” scoffs Winona, rolling her eyes. She’s dusty from head to foot, thick smudges of dirt smeared across her cheeks. 

“Have you been rolling in the dirt?” he demands, dropping the carrot in the bowl sitting in the sink and brushing himself off. His wet hands come away coated in filth. “Come on, I just took a shower, mom.”

“And I haven’t seen you in almost six months. I’m entitled to a cuddle.”

Jim sighs. “Didn’t Bones, like, menace you outside? How did you get in here without me knowing?”

“Bones?” echoes Winona. “I didn’t even see him. I thought he’d be…guarding the house, or something.”

“So, he’s useless as a guard dog, then,” says Jim. He walks to the back door and pulls it open, turning on the outside light. “ _Bones_! Bo—oh. He’s right there.” He points at the chicken coop, where Bones is sprawled alongside it, head pillowed on his forelegs. 

Winona comes up beside him to look, and Bones lifts his head lazily, only one ear twisting their direction. Jim is expecting him to at least growl at the presence of a stranger, but Bones yawns and gets to his feet, dislodging a drowsy hen sitting on his back in the process. After a joint-popping stretch Bones pads over and allows Jim to ruffle his ears. 

“You’re a terrible alarm system,” says Jim. “Even lapdogs make more noise than you do. Didn’t even think you should bark? Or howl?”

Bones snorts dismissively and gets bored with Jim, turning his keen gaze to Winona. He doesn’t even bother to sniff her proffered hand, just immediately bumps up next to her hip and leans demandingly.

“He wants to be petted,” says Jim scathingly, sitting down on the deckchair. “Apparently I’ve adopted the only wolf in the world that is a total _suck_.”

Winona laughs, obliging Bones with a hard pat down his ruff. Bones rumbles happily, licking her fingers, and Jim scowls. 

“Oh, come on,” says Winona soothingly. “He’s smart, and it’s clear he knows we’re related. He’s a pack animal, Jim, his entire world-view is set in family hierarchy. I’m your mother, and I’m higher in rank. Right, puppy?”

Bones, the spineless traitor, makes the whimpery noise he only seems to emit when he’s agreeing to something, and rolls over onto his back at Winona’s feet, presenting his stomach for a belly rub. 

“Oh, so it takes me saving your life to even let me get _near_ you, but you give it up to my _mom_ right away?” mumbles Jim sulkily. “You slut.”

“He’s a lovely boy, isn’t he?” croons Winona in shameless baby-talk as she crouches down to scrub at his belly. “Yes he is! Yes he is!”

“Oh my god,” says Jim, covering his face with his hands. “Don’t embarrass him! Don’t embarrass _me_.”

“Who’s embarrassing?” continues Winona, clutching Bones’s paws and shaking them in time with her words. “Jim is! Jim is!”

“If I catch you teaching him tricks,” says Jim, “we are done professionally.”

Jim is starting to think Bones escaped from a zoo, or something.

He’s just so… _well-trained_. The kind of well-trained that shows an animal is still wild, but is also accustomed to humans, sleeping outside and doing his own thing, but turning up at the appropriate times to be fed and regarding human contact as something enjoyable, now that Jim and Winona have proven themselves to be trustworthy. 

One afternoon, after finding Winona reading on the porch wearing a Bones blanket across her bare legs, he goes online and googles “are there wolves in Iowa.”

He discovers they are a rare occurrence, generally migrating down from Minnesota or Wisconsin before moving on again, which lends even more credence to his zoo escape theory. There are no recent articles about escaped wolves from zoos, but Jim also has no idea how old Bones is or how long he’s been roaming the woods. 

Later that day, when Winona’s gone into town and Bones is nosing the chickens back inside the coop, Jim heads outside with a handful of dried sausages. 

“Bones!” he calls, waving one vaguely in the air. “Hey buddy! Lookie here, huh?”

Bones glances over at Jim. Then, with the deliberate contrariness of a creature that knows exactly what Jim is trying to do and isn’t having any of it, he sits down and stares at him. 

“Come on,” coaxes Jim. “If you don’t come over and take one of these, I’m going to eat them all myself.”

Bones huffs noisily and looks away. It’s a sound of pure impatience. 

Annoyed, Jim throws a sausage and Bones is on it before it even hits the ground, snatching it out of the air and devouring it. 

Watching him sullenly, Jim throws another sausage, landing it equidistant between them both.

Bones doesn’t move from his spot.

“You are such a little shit,” snaps Jim, taking an angry bite from one of the sausages. “Please?”

With a long-suffering sigh, Bones gets up and pads over to the sausage, picking it up delicately between his teeth and carrying it back to Jim, his tail wagging half-heartedly. 

“Good boy,” says Jim triumphantly. 

Bones tolerates a whole round of patting before stealing the remaining sausages right out of Jim’s hands.

Winona leaves on another long-term job posting a week after she turns up, and Jim’s life settles back into commonplace routine.

It’s lonelier without her, but Bones makes things a little easier, providing someone to talk to that doesn’t really answer back but at least knows, to some extent, what Jim is on about. 

He even pretends to sit on command for him when Jim is bored on a Sunday afternoon and getting steadily more irritated by the hot sun and the relentless pressing humidity. 

There’s a storm building, a tumble of blue-black clouds blowing in on the horizon. 

Bones is antsy, sidling close alongside Jim all day, until the rain finally starts coming down in the late evening.

That seems to signal Bones’s limit and Jim turns around and finds Bones has disappeared. He finishes securing the chicken coop before he peeks into the garage, and there’s Bones curled up on the blankets in a pathetic heap, his eyes wide and a paw draped over his muzzle, pressed as flat against the floor as he’s able.

“You really are such a big baby,” says Jim from the doorway, already soaked and not really bothered. “Why don’t you come inside, buddy?” He pats his thigh, inviting, but Bones lets out a whine and turns his head away, his ears twitching at every rumble of thunder. 

“Fine,” laughs Jim. “Have it your way. I’m going to go curl up in my warm, cosy bed. Good night, Bonesy.”

Jim wakes up to what he imagines the apocalypse might sound like.

There’s a whole lot of howling wind and lashing rain and the _crack_ of falling tree branches. 

Jim’s always liked storms, because he’s the kind of destructive son of a bitch that can really appreciate the occasional complete system reboot a massive storm brings; there’s something comforting about being inside while all hell breaks loose outside.

He’s just drifting off to sleep again when there’s a sound from outside like a bomb going off, followed by a violent tremor that shakes through the house and throws him right out of bed.

“ _That_ isn’t so comforting,” babbles Jim, scrabbling out of his bed sheets, disoriented. “That is the complete opposite of comforting. Ohmygodohmy _god_ —”

He can still hear the wind and the hard drum of rain as he runs unsteadily down the stairs rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, his heart pounding as hard as the steady rumbles of thunder. Shoes are most definitely not a priority, so Jim goes barrelling out the door and promptly falls down the porch steps.

The yard, upon hasty inspection from Jim’s current position on his ass in the mud, could rather generously be described as a hilariously disorganized construction site. 

The rain is cold, driving into his skin in icy slashes, and Jim is kind of starting to wish he’d taken the time to put on some clothes. His boxers stick to his thighs as he gets back to his feet, and his teeth have already started to chatter uncontrollably.

It isn’t until he picks his way around the porch to the side of the house that he realises the garage has been fucking _flattened_ by a tree.

The _garage_.

_Flattened_ by a huge fucking _tree_.

Bones. _Bones_.

For a moment, Jim doesn’t know what to do. 

Every crack of thunder shakes him to the core. This can’t be happening. He’s standing in the rain, almost naked, screaming Bones’s name over the roar of the storm, and Jim doesn’t think.

He doesn’t even _think_.

And, okay, there are a lot of situations in which Jim doesn’t think before he acts, but doing a somersault into a collapsed garage crushed flat by a giant groaning oak tree is probably the one that definitely classifies him as an idiotic fuckwit rather than just a stupid motherfucker. 

Jim blinks rainwater out of his eyes. The blankets have been abandoned, tossed all over the branch-strewn dirt floor. He feels like his head might just explode like the tree fell on his skull instead of the roof of the garage. 

Fear licking up his spine, Jim crawls back out of the demolished garage doors scanning the farmyard. “Bones! BONES. COME HERE, YOU BASTARD. I know you’re out here somewhere! _Please_!”

And that’s when Bones appears, slinking into view near the chicken coop.

His eyes are bright green in the semi-darkness, fur plastered down by water. When he sees Jim he hunkers down by the coop and whines. 

“NO!” yells Jim, smacking his thigh sharply. “You are not sleeping with the fucking CHICKENS, you asshole! You’re coming in the fucking house!”

Bones whines again, and Jim can see even from where he’s standing that Bones is shaking bodily.

Jim sets his shoulders, stands up straight, points at the ground beside him, and bellows, “BONES, _COME_.”

Bones comes.

With his tail between his legs, Bones comes, and Jim catches him by the collar and runs with him back into the house as lightning streaks across the sky and a clap of thunder follows right on its heels.

Jim strips out of his soaking wet boxers right in the foyer.

Naked, with Bones trailing after him, his claws skittering on the wood floor, Jim walks shivering into the bathroom. Bones looks miserably out of place hunkered down on the tile floor, his dark fur dripping puddles. Jim bundles into a bathrobe, scrubbing hastily at his hair with a towel until he feels a little less like a waterlogged rat, and then he turns his attention to Bones. 

“C’mon,” he coaxes, picking up a bath sheet and kneeling down in front of the terrified animal. “I’m gonna dry you off, buddy. Sit.” 

Bones is trembling through and through, his ears flat against his head, but he sits obediently at Jim’s gentle command and doesn’t move as Jim towels him off, rubbing the towel over his entire body until his fur is standing out in puffy clouds and he looks like someone accidentally locked him in a dryer. 

“There we go,” he murmurs, ruffling Bones’s ears. “That’s a good boy.”

Bones licks his fingers. He’s stopped shivering.

“I’m sorry,” says Jim, petting him all over, rubbing his fingers deep into Bones’s thick ruff. “I shouldn’t have let you sleep in the barn.”

Bones just barks, low in his throat, and licks him again.

Jim gets to his feet, suddenly exhausted. “Well, come on. I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to bed.”

Bones follows him quietly up the stairs into his bedroom.

There’s no protest when Jim gets under the covers and says, “Just stop being such a stubborn shit and get on the damn bed, Bones.” Bones leaps up, quick and silent, and he circles once, twice, before curling up at the foot of the bed, warming Jim’s toes. 

“Good boy,” mumbles Jim, already half-asleep.

In the morning, or rather, mid-afternoon, when Jim finally drags himself out of bed, it’s still raining.

The storm has mostly passed, giving way to solid grey clouds and the steady patter of raindrops on the roof. 

For a while, Jim stays motionless in the cosy nest of his bed, no longer oppressively sticky now that the humidity has lifted, his face burrowed in the pillow. There’s a heavy weight at the end of the mattress, and when he wriggles his toes, the weight shifts. 

Jim opens his eyes, peering down the length of the bed, and there’s Bones, curled up in neat ball, his eyes open and looking right back at Jim. 

“Hey, buddy,” says Jim, smiling. 

Bones thumps his tail against the bed and then cracks a toothy yawn. Jim reaches out and Bones crawls alongside him to allow Jim to scritch his ears. 

“You gonna be a house pet, now?” asks Jim, voice thick with sleep. “Sleep in a basket?”

The snorting noise Bones makes in response seems to neatly veto this suggestion. 

“C’mon,” murmurs Jim, yawning lazily. “Let’s go survey the damage.”

It’s a bit strange to walk around the house and have the click of claws on hardwood floors follow him.

“You sound like you’re wearing tap shoes,” Jim says, turning to look at Bones. He’s kneeling in the entrance to the hall closet, searching for his rubber boots. 

Bones snuffles dismissively, looking incongruous next to the dining room table. The domestic surroundings highlight his size, the sleek wealth of muscle lurking beneath his thick, dark fur. After saving Bones from the trap, Jim started feeding him more than just dog food, getting cuts of meat from the butcher, as well as poultry, fruit, vegetables, and eggs. He’d grown healthier by the day, his body now solid and agile, with long, lean legs.

“Got ‘em,” mutters Jim, excavating a pair of pink polka-dot boots from beneath an umbrella graveyard and then shaking them defensively at Bones. “Don’t you dare laugh. These were Sam’s idea of a joke.”

For a moment, Jim can’t figure out why his stomach has just clenched up like he’s about to vomit. And then it hits him, which such clarity it brings tears to his eyes, that he hasn’t spoken that name aloud in over a year, that Sam’s been dead now for _two_.

As if sensing the change in mood, Bones pads over to Jim and leans on him heavily, his wet nose pressing to Jim face as he licks his cheek. Jim clings to him, curls his arm around Bones’s neck and buries his face in his ruff, rubbing his fingers into the silky peaks of Bones’s ears.

There’s a photo of Sam in the living room, the last one Winona will tolerate in the house, the only one that still makes her smile rather than draw all the air out of the room.

Jim’s caught her standing by it countless times, tracing her fingertips over the glass.

When she’s not home, Jim turns it to face the wall.

Sam’s absence is still an open sore.

They never talk about him.

Bones whines, his claws clattering anxiously on the floor. 

“Hey,” says Jim quietly, tangling his fingers in Bones’s thick fur. “It’s okay. It just caught me by surprise.”

Jim finishes dressing himself in silence, pulling on his raincoat and boots and finding the huge golf umbrella that Winona used to use when she’d pick them—Sam _again_ , fuck, _fuck_ , twice in a day—up from school on a stormy day, shielding them from the weather on the half-mile trek back to the farmhouse.

By the time he heads outside with Bones close by his heels, mud squishing under his feet, Jim has pushed thoughts of his brother aside. 

Maybe, the next time Winona is back, he’ll bring him up. 

Maybe then, they’ll be ready.

The river that runs parallel to the south-west border of the farm has burst its banks, creeping in between the trees of the forest alongside it.

It’s fast-flowing at the best of times, but now it’s positively racing, carrying broken tree branches and bracken with it, forming banks of debris that choke the narrower sections and create funnels of current. 

“It could be worse,” says Jim. “All that water could be flooding into my fields. We’ll lose some of the harvest, but not all of it.”

Bones ignores him, snuffling along the bank, his ears pricked forward. Then he raises his head, going absolutely still and barking once. His tail is wagging, and he’s poised like a pointing dog.

“What?” says Jim. “Did little Timmy fall in the well, Lassie?”

Bones barks again, this time impatiently, and Jim moves up to stand beside him, listening.

Over the distorted rush of the river, Jim can hear a tiny animal bleating.

“Oh jeeze,” says Jim, picking his way over a swell of debris, following the panicked sound. “You know what that is, Bones? That’s one of Gary fucking Mitchell’s lambs. He wouldn’t shut up about them last week, and I bet you a million dollars that’s the sound of one of them in mortal peril.”

Jim’s foot slips a little on a shelf of mud and he curses. “I can’t do this one-handed,” he mutters. He folds up the umbrella, standing it on a nearby tree, before using both hands to climb the cluster of branches, rain dripping into his eyes. 

“He’s gonna owe me so bad,” he says. “Bones, stay here.”

When he crests the top, he spots the lamb, stranded on a rock, surrounded on all sides by rushing water. It’s wet and miserable and shivering, and Jim wonders briefly whether it’s even worth trying to reach it if the poor thing is probably going to die of shock anyway. And then he thinks of Bones, of how he saved him despite the fact that he was so sure he was going to die, how he was so cowardly he couldn’t even stand to stick around afterwards. 

Behind him, Bones whimpers, a distinctly unhappy sound.

“It’ll be fine,” says Jim loudly, clutching at mud-slick stones, trying to pull himself up out of the tangle of sludgy bracken. “It’s not that far from the bank.”

The lamb is close enough for Jim to reach but far enough for the lamb not to be able to jump on its own. Jim leans across the rushing water and scoops it into his arms, releasing it onto the bank and watching it leap away into the forest, heading back in the direction of the Mitchell farm.

“See?” Jim says to Bones, reaching up to wipe water out of his eyes. “Totally fine.”

Yeah. Totally fine. 

Right up until Jim tries to pull himself back and he falls right into the water as the debris abruptly gives way.

The twin trauma of smashing his head into a rock and the shock of the water temperature stuns Jim enough to make his limbs useless, so swimming frantically is out of the question, especially in the rough current buffeting him, but it doesn’t matter because...he’s not moving.

Bones snarls, very near his ear, and Jim struggles to turn his head, vision obscured by the sluggish drip of blood.

His hood. Bones has got him by the hood of his raincoat, jaw clamped down around the bunched up fabric. 

Jim reaches out, hand shaking, but Bones isn’t a person, he’s a wolf, and if he grabs one of his front paws, Bones won’t be able to pull him up the crumbling bank. Jim will probably just knock him off balance and they’ll _both_ get swept away. 

Bones is wild-eyed, his paws scrabbling on the wet stones. If he readjusts his grip, his teeth will sink right into Jim’s shoulder.

“C’mon, buddy,” mumbles Jim, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. He tries to touch bottom and can’t, and every bit of riverbank he grabs just comes loose and rushes away. “Just let go. It’s okay. You can’t hold on forever.”

Even over the sound of the water, Jim can hear when something _tears_. 

He braces himself, thinking it’s his raincoat, but then a hand closes around his upper arm—a very strong, very _human_ hand—and in the ensuing chaos of _what the fuck is even happening_ an arm winds around his neck like in a firm headlock, wrestling Jim out of the water and throwing him hard onto the bank, well away from the clusters of shaky debris. 

Jim coughs, bent over himself on blessedly solid ground, and wipes the blood out of his eyes.

When he looks up, it’s to a sight that makes no sense.

Bones is nowhere to be seen. 

Instead, there’s a naked man on the grass, soaking wet and trembling, bracing himself on all fours. 

Jim’s never seen him before in his life. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, pale skin dotted with clusters of freckles. A dark shock of hair is plastered over his forehead, almost hiding his wide, familiar hazel eyes.

Around his neck, the tag lying against the hollow of his clavicle, is a black leather collar.

Jim lets out a strangled laugh. 

The sound seems to startle Bones, who meets Jim’s eyes reluctantly, his expression wide-open and shit-scared. 

“Bones,” says Jim. Without a question.

Bones moves awkwardly, in aborted little movements. Jerkily, he nods. 

“Hey,” says Jim, in that same gentling tone he used at the very beginning, when Bones was wild and skittish and starving. He holds out a hand. “You saved my life.”

Bones opens his mouth like he’s about to speak and then stops himself, shaking his head instead. He gets shakily to his feet, as unstable as a newborn colt, and takes Jim’s proffered hand, helping him get to his feet. They lean into each other, Bones wrapping an arm around Jim’s shoulder, pressing close. 

Together, in companionable silence, they walk back to the farm.

While Jim feels better for stretching out his cold, stiff muscles as they walk, Bones seems to flag rapidly, and by the time they reach the house, he’s panting, stumbling over his own feet.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” urges Jim unthinkingly, his head throbbing with every step. “We’re almost there. Hot shower, ahoy.”

Bones grunts, his fingers curled tightly around Jim’s shoulder. 

It hasn’t escaped Jim that Bones still hasn’t spoken a single word.

They drip puddles onto the floor once they get inside, Jim’s clothes waterlogged and Bones wet from the rain and the river. 

Jim is struggling to get out of his raincoat when Bones surprises him by gripping his face gently in big hands, turning it this way and that, before scowling hilariously as he peels Jim’s eyelid open and tilts his head into the light coming in from the window.

“What’s the verdict?” says Jim. 

It’s a little jarring for Bones to suddenly be his equal in height, those green-hazel eyes looking directly into his without Jim kneeling down on the ground. Bones examines him closely for a moment longer, his brow furrowed, before he makes a noise in his throat again, grudgingly satisfied, one eyebrow arching up.

It’s such a clear mirror of the behaviour to which Jim’s grown accustomed in Bones-the-wolf that he’s reaching out to cup Bones’s heart-shaped, _human_ face before he can stop himself.

“You,” whispers Jim. “ _You_ are something else, Bones.” He traces a line down from one high eyebrow, over a rounded cheekbone, brushing over generous lips. 

Christ, he’s beautiful. 

And uncharacteristically silent.

“Hey,” says Jim again, face crinkling with a smile. “C’mon, Bones. Speak.”

He doesn’t mean to make it a command, but that’s the way it comes out. Bones flushes deeply, from freckled nose to damp chest.

“Damned fool,” he rasps, eyelashes lowering as he directs his gaze to the floor. 

Jim laughs aloud, delighted. “Of _course_ the first words you say to me are an insult.”

Bones exhales sharply, his lip quirking in a repressed smile. His throat works. “Can we get dry, now?” he mumbles. His voice is a dry, dusty thing, cracking from lack of use. 

“Yeah,” says Jim. “Of course.”

In the bathroom, Jim strips out of his sodden clothes and hustles Bones into the shower with him, not willing to make him wait when he’s still shivering.

The hot spray of water makes them both sigh in relief.

The entire situation could be a lot more awkward than it ends up actually being, especially considering Bones is still acting like his body is an altogether foreign thing. The movement of his limbs is erratic and badly coordinated, and Jim supposes that going from four legs to two legs and two arms is a pretty big leap to make. When he makes a grab for the shampoo and knocks it right off the shelf, apparently having trouble re-adjusting to the concept of opposable thumbs, Jim takes over, retrieving the fallen bottle and lathering up Bones’s hair for him. Bones goes obediently still as Jim patiently washes his hair, head ducked down under the spray, pliant and relaxed. 

Bones steps out of the tub when Jim turns off the water, tucking a towel around his hips and then standing there uncertainly, looking lost. Again, Jim takes over, drying Bones’s hair with another towel.

“Thanks,” says Bones sheepishly, running his fingers through his tousled hair when Jim is finished. “Um. Sit on the edge of the tub, please?”

Jim blinks and sits down in confusion, watching as Bones slides open the mirror and searches through the medicine cabinet. He reads the labels on the bottles carefully before he extracts them, and Jim, remembering his inability to use shampoo, stiffens a bit. 

“Bones,” he says. “I can do that.”

Bones turns to Jim with antiseptic in one hand and an adhesive bandage in the other. “It’s fine,” he says. “I can do it. Just getting used to...having fingers and thumbs again. And I was cold.” His brow furrows again. “Trust me?”

Fuck nuggets. What the hell could Jim ever say to that?

He nods, and Bones steps up close to him, frowning in concentration as he cleans the cut and bandages it neatly. Jim’s visions of antiseptic-burned eyeballs prove fanciful and he grins ruefully as Bones says, “there, all done,” and turns to wash his hands in the sink.

“Thanks,” says Jim sincerely, watching Bones with open fascination. None of Jim’s clothes are going to fit properly over those broad shoulders. “Do you want that collar off?”

Bones’s shoulders hunch a bit as he shakes his hands in the sink and dries them on the towel wrapped around his waist. He doesn’t turn around right away, and Jim realises he’s looking at himself in the mirror, touching the collar, pinging the tag with a fingernail. His eyes track over his own reflection, faintly awed. “No,” he admits quietly. “Not really.”

Something hot flares in Jim’s chest and then settles in his gut. He clears his throat. “Okay. Are you hungry?”

“Always,” says Bones, finally turning around. He hits Jim with an unexpected dimpled smile, and Jim doesn’t even know what to do with himself.

“Grilled cheese,” babbles Jim. “And tomato soup.”

Jim leaves Bones in the bathroom to go get clothes, dressing himself hurriedly and then digging through his closet for something that Bones will be able to put on without destroying.

He ends up bringing him a t-shirt Jim accidentally bought a size too large, a pair of boxers, and some sweatpants, delivering them into the bathroom where Bones is still leaning of the sink and touching his own face.

“Here you go, buddy. I’ll be in the kitchen, making some lunch, okay?”

Bones’s gaze finds Jim in the mirror and he nods. “Okay. Thanks, Jim.”

It thrills Jim a little bit, hearing Bones say his name.

And then it hits him, along with every other eager question he’s been keeping carefully at bay since he looked up and saw that Bones had _changed_.

“Bones,” he says. 

Jim steps into the bathroom, and Bones turns his attention to him fully. “Yeah?”

Suddenly nervous, Jim rubs his palms into his jeans. He doesn’t know what this means for them anymore, how this will alter their comfortable routine. His excitement fades into helpless anxiety. What if Bones leaves him? What if...?

He wants to ask everything. Instead, he starts at the beginning. “What’s your name?”

Bones seems utterly floored by the question. His throat works, eyes wide. Clearly he hasn’t thought about it in quite some time. “Leonard,” he finally says. “Leonard McCoy. Leo.”

“Leonard,” says Jim, trying it out. It sounds _wrong_ coming out of his mouth and Jim’s stomach flips. “Okay. Should I—”

“No,” says Bones sharply. He flinches, closing his eyes. “I like ‘Bones’ just fine. Please.”

Jim lets out a breath. “Okay. Okay. Lunch. Take your time, Bones.”

Bones nods and Jim closes the door behind him, successfully resisting the urge to heel-click his way into the kitchen.

They sit and eat grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup as the rain continues to fall, pattering softly on the roof.

Bones sits with a distinctive slouch, damp hair falling into his eyes as he takes a massive bite out of a triangle of sandwich. 

The noise he makes as he chews is one of unmitigated pleasure. 

Jim dips his own sandwich into his tomato soup, watching Bones happily. “I am totally a grilled cheese connoisseur. Glad you approve.”

“I missed cooked food,” mumbles Bones through a full mouth. “Jesus wept. Melted _cheese_.” 

“Hey!” protests Jim, waving his spoon in Bones’s direction. “I tried to give you variation!”

“Uh huh,” says Bones, rolling his eyes. He’s already eaten half his sandwich. “ _After_ a month of dog food.”

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” retorts Jim.

Bones ignores him in favour of stuffing his grilled cheese into his face. When he has consumed all of said sandwich, he removes his spoon from the bowl, licks it, sets it aside, and picks up the bowl with both hands, drinking the soup like it’s a giant mug of coffee. 

When he’s finished, he slumps back in his chair, his eyelids drooping. “I need to go to bed,” he mumbles. “Today...took a lot out of me. Where should I sleep?”

Jim looks up from drowning the remains of his sandwich in his soup, prodding it lazily beneath the surface with his spoon. “What? Did you forget I have a double bed?”

Bones flushes again. “Isn’t…that weird?”

Jim just stares at him. “More or less weird than seeing you naked and then taking a shower with you? You can sleep in my bed, Bones.”

Something about the set of Bones’s tense shoulders relaxes. “Okay.”

So Bones sleeps.

Jim putters around the house for a while, washing dishes, tidying the bathroom, putting on a load of laundry, checking on the chickens. It’s not really late enough for him to sleep yet, and his brain is too wired anyway. 

He even tries to call Winona, desperate for someone to talk to that might know how to comfort him, but wherever she is, her phone doesn’t have reception.

Eventually, he just goes to bed, sliding in alongside Bones and closing his eyes.

He falls asleep to the rhythm of Bones’s even breaths.

In the darkness, Jim opens his eyes.

Next to him, Bones is tossing restlessly, murmuring indistinct words. He makes a wounded noise not unlike a sob, and Jim moves without even thinking, drawing Bones into his arms and whispering soothing nonsense into his ear, stroking his thick hair and hugging him tightly.

“Shhh,” he whispers. “Bones. Wake up. You’re okay.”

Bones wakes with a start, jerking in Jim’s arms, but he relaxes almost immediately. “Jim,” he says softly, his voice hitching. “I thought...”

“What?” encourages Jim, ruffling Bones’s hair. “Bad dream?”

“Yeah,” sighs Bones.

“Bones,” Jim says quietly, his voice hushed. He thinks about Bones healing practically overnight, the sound of his transformation, the strength he used to pull Jim from the river. “What are you?”

“A shifter,” replies Bones. “A shape-changer.”

“So, not a werewolf,” teases Jim. 

Bones makes a soft noise, like a chuckle. “No. Nothing to do with the moon.”

And now, the question that’s been whirling around Jim’s mind, begging for his attention. “Why didn’t you show me sooner?” He tries to keep that edge of hurt out of his voice, because it’s not his right to _be_ hurt over it. 

Bones sighs, curling his fingers around Jim’s wrist. “It’s not that I didn’t want to, Jim. I _couldn’t_.”

“What was stopping you?”

“I forgot how.”

“What?” he says, alarmed. “That can happen?”

“My father…died,” Bones says heavily. “My mother followed. I started going wolf more often, for longer periods. I’d been warned. The longer you hold a shape, the easier it is to forget your other one. But it was easier to cope as a wolf.”

“How long?” asks Jim. He curls closer to Bones, running his fingertips through the short hairs at the nape of Bones’s neck.

“Two years,” says Bones wryly. “Give or take a few months. I tried. I tried everything. But I couldn’t reconnect with my human mind, couldn’t reach it. Wasn’t strong enough.”

Jim can’t begin to comprehend being trapped inside his own body. He shudders. “How did you do it today?”

Bones laughs, low and fond. “You really gotta ask? You, Jim. I changed for you. I couldn’t pull you up if I stayed as I was. I needed my hands. It was either that, or drown together, because I wasn’t going to let go.”

Jim is quiet for a long time. Bones is warm and safe in his arms, and Jim kisses the top of his head impulsively. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Jim? I dreamt that I changed back,” admits Bones in a small voice. “And I forgot again.”

“Hey,” says Jim soothingly. “It’s okay. If that ever happened, I’d just fall into another river.”

Bones laughs. “Don’t you _dare_.”

After the nightmare, Bones goes back to sleep, and then proceeds to _stay_ asleep for what feels like the next fifty billion years.

Jim’s never needed more than five or six hours of sleep, so after a nap, and a while spent curled around Bones’s lax, peacefully sleeping body, he gets out of bed, puts on some pants, and pulls down the trap door that leads up to the attic. 

Neither Jim nor Winona is a particularly neat person. When they store things in the attic, they generally put stuff in the first available box. None of it is labelled. It’s an unsystematic nightmare of disorganisation where old clothes live beside Christmas lights and children’s books get mingled with engineering journals.

Sam used to be the one that kept it tidy.

Dragging over the closest box, Jim sits down and opens it. 

Inside are a jumble of Hot Wheels and the accompanying play mat, which Jim unfolds and lays flat on the floor, kneeling down to trace the brightly coloured buildings and roads with his fingers. 

“You were an asshole for never letting me have the Ferrari, Sammy,” murmurs Jim quietly, pulling out the battered toy car and rolling it across the mat. “But I miss you.”

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud.

Two hours later, Jim’s sitting by the window reading one of Winona’s old articles when he hears Bones calling his name from the bottom of the ladder.

Jim crawls over the trap door and peers down.

Bones is standing there, looking rumpled and sleep-mussed, pillow creases on his cheeks, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. Jim can’t even believe that this is his life. What did he ever do to deserve Bones?

“Hey,” says Bones apologetically, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes. “Um. I’m hungry. There’s nothing in the fridge.”

Jim grins. “Didn’t you check in the cabinet? There’s dog food.”

Bones scowls, rubbing his fingers through his hair. “That’s not actually funny. You think you’re a lot funnier than you are.”

“What the hell do wolves know about humour?” says Jim, swinging his body around to climb down the ladder, dropping down next to Bones in a small cloud of dust. “I bet my humour is just on a level you don’t understand.”

“Uh huh,” says Bones, in a tone of voice that implies he thinks Jim is full of shit. “You hold onto that idea as hard as you want. It’s not at all delusions of grandeur.”

It’s a little strange, how easily Jim adjusts to suddenly having a shiny new live-in best friend instead of a pet wolf, especially when it means he gets to write off traditional chores to order Chinese food and sit with Bones in the living room eating chicken chow mein and sweet and sour pork, watching him have orgasms over the almost-forgotten taste of takeout.

“I’ll go to the grocery store tomorrow,” says Jim, licking sweet and sour sauce off his fingers. Bones is eating with a fork, curling noodles around and around the tines, while Jim shovels rice into his mouth on chopsticks. “You can come, if you want. Stick your head out of the window and feel the wind in your hair.”

Bones rolls his eyes. “Har Har. I can see how those jokes are never going to get old.”

Jim chews thoughtfully on a piece of green pepper. “I never got you vaccinated.”

“Ba-dum tish,” mutters Bones through a full mouth.

Jim wants to ask how long Bones plans to stay, but he’s afraid of the answer.

Later, Jim catches Bones standing in the living room looking at the photograph of Sam.

Jim forgot turn it to face the wall after Winona left.

“Is this Sam?” asks Bones, without looking at Jim.

It’s a brief shock to the system to hear the name from Bones’s lips, but then he remembers the pink polka dot rubber boots, how he’d clutched at Bones’s solid frame and cried into his ruff.

“Yeah,” says Jim. He licks dry lips. “My big brother. He was 26 when he died. In his sleep. An aneurysm.”

Bones touches the glass with a gentle fingertip. “You look a lot alike.” He pauses, hesitating. “When did he die?”

Jim picks at a loose thread on his shirt. “Two years ago.” 

Two years ago, Jim woke up, and Sam didn’t. 

Bones looks at Jim, then, his expression unreadable. Bones, who spent the last two years of his life in another body, lost and then found.

“Bones,” says Jim haltingly. He can’t keep waiting this out. He has to _know_. “Bones, I...”

“Just ask,” Bones interrupts. “You ask, or you just _tell_ , whatever it is, I’ll do it. You got that? I don’t think you realise...” He looks stricken. “I don’t think you realise. I belong to you. You want me to stay, tell me to stay. Jim, I got nowhere else to go. No one else that wants me. Nothing’s changed. Just because I remembered how to _be_ again doesn’t mean I’m leaving.”

“Stay,” says Jim fiercely. “I want you to stay with me.”

The expression on Bones’s face is one of visible relief. “Okay. _Okay_.”

“Say it,” begs Jim, coming forward, pulling Bones into his arms, burying his fingers in his hair and kissing his temple. 

“I’ll stay,” whispers Bones. His arms come up around Jim firmly. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Jim closes his eyes.

And breathes.

**end**


End file.
